Doctor Dearest
by Lucillia
Summary: Auror Harry Potter runs into the Tenth Doctor during School Reunion. Matters are slightly complicated by the fact that a future incarnation of the Doctor is Harry's mother. During a couple adventures together, Harry gets to know one of the parents he lost.
1. Becoming Lily

The Doctor sighed as she pulled on a pair of jeans that were identical to the ones the corpse under stasis was wearing. She would probably never get used to the body she currently had since she'd spent her entire life as a male until just recently. This was just another example of the love/hate relationship that Lady Luck seemed to have with her. So far during this regeneration, she'd had a great deal of luck...all of it bad. It had started with the fact that she wasn't entirely a she despite the fact that her new brain was insisting she was, which was confusing enough because she'd spent her entire life before then as a he, and the not she bit was currently the most familiar to her.

Well, at least she was finally a ginger, and she had the most beautiful green eyes too.

Though she wouldn't know it until it was far too late to do anything about it, her current bi-gendered body which looked rather feminine until one got a peek in the trousers and found signs of both internal and external reproductive organs would cause the Chameleon Arch to malfunction slightly, though of course that could be the TARDIS doing what needed to be done in order to get the Doctor to save the world yet again. Shoddy maintenance on the Chameleon Arch which she had sworn never to use again during her Tenth incarnation after the birth and demise of John Smith, might've also been to blame for what had happened. Either way, rather than turning her into a human as it should've when she used it, the Chameleon Arch had bestowed upon her a certain genetic compatibility with a certain Terran species that she'd been rather fond of.

Personally, the Doctor would've rather found another way, any other way, to deal with the situation, but since she had encountered Lily Evans moments after her death, she could not go back and save her as that would create the same sort of world ending paradox her Ninth incarnation had inadvertently made when he'd taken Rose back to see her father on the day he died, and she'd briefly rescued him.

As Lily Evans rather eerily resembled her current incarnation, externally at least, using the Chameleon Arch to become a female human with the slight genetic quirk that would enable her to do what the humans called magic, which was close to the Carrionite word based science seemed like a rather logical plan. Having learned her lesson after the John Smith debacle she'd set a couple of commands into her new watch before activating the Arch, namely: 1. Never ever lose the watch, and 2. Open the watch on the day and time it tells you to, no ifs, ands, buts or quibbling about wanting to remain Lily Evans about it.

After a great deal of excruciating pain, a male/female Time Lord that was genetically compatible with the human race, fully capable of reproduction in either gender and thought its name was Lily stepped out of the TARDIS, walked into the Evans residence, walked up to Lily Evans' bedroom and collapsed. As soon as she did this, the Doctor's current companion, a rather nice and extremely spry old lady named Angie Johnson walked off to find one of the nearest pay phones. According to the instructions she'd been given, she would need to put the TARDIS into storage for a while and wait for the Doctor to come back for her. She had another ten years until she absolutely needed to go back to the twenty-seventh century for her treatments, and the Doctor said it wouldn't need to take nearly that long, so, as long as she kept her head down and didn't do anything stupid, she should be fine until the time came.

* * *

><p>Albus Dumbledore felt like crying when he saw the bodies of the parents of one of Hogwarts' best and brightest strewn about the sitting room of their home. One of the Order's newest recruits looked as if he would be ill. The Order's Seer, Madam Lovegood, a venerable and rather ancient woman who was nearing death had wandered away without reacting however. He would not have risked bringing her in her current condition if she hadn't insisted that it was vital that she come. Knowing that there was nothing he could do for Mr. and Mrs. Evans, he turned to one of the team that arrived with him and requested that he attempt to put the corpses back together so they could be somewhat presentable when Miss Evans' sister returned. No child should see their parents in this manner. After that was done, he turned to follow the Seer upstairs.<p>

He found the Seer in a room he assumed to belong to Miss Evans. She was standing over an unconscious young woman who bore a striking resemblance to Miss Evans, and probably would have fooled anyone who didn't know the girl that well. He however knew Miss Evans well enough that he could tell right away that this girl wasn't her. He pulled out his wand and prepared to deal with the impostor, but the Seer Lovegood gestured for him to stop before he could fire off the first curse at the person who undoubtedly had something to do with the scene downstairs.

"Lily is needed." the Seer said. "Lily is gone forever, but Lily is needed. The Doctor would be Lily. The Doctor will be Lily. Lily is needed."

Albus understood. Lily was needed for the future somehow, and this impostor would have to be Lily because the real Lily Evans had died with her parents when she shouldn't have. Coming up with a plan on the fly, he wrapped the young woman he would have to start thinking of as Lily Evans in a blanket and levitated her down the stairs. He'd planned on giving the head girl position to someone less controversial this year, but that plan had just fallen by the wayside since he needed Lily away from her dormmates who would soon suspect something was wrong if she lived with them full-time once school was back in session. Any oddities in "Lily's" behaviour could be explained away by the nights events, and if she didn't get too close to anyone who knew her, the story wouldn't be questioned. It was a good thing that it was early enough in the Summer that the badges hadn't yet been handed out.

"She's alive, but just barely." Dumbledore said to the group of Order members who had gathered at the bottom of the stairs waiting for him.

He felt slightly guilty when he saw the relief and traces of hope on the Order members' faces.

Lily was indeed needed, if only for that little bit of hope she had given to the people who stood in the living room of the Evans family's ruined home. He could see the thought in their eyes that if one insignificant muggleborn girl could survive, then there was hope that they and their families could as well. He knew that hope was false, but he wouldn't disillusion his comrades because their hope was good for morale, and if what little hope they had was lost, they would surely lose the war.

* * *

><p>It was the night of October 31st 1981. The Doctor felt as if her hearts were being torn out, but it had to be done. The child was needed here. Somehow she knew that the child had to grow up on the Earth of here and now. It was as if she'd known for decades or even centuries that it would come to this, but she didn't know how. Perhaps it was something that had occurred in the great swathe of past that was lost to her during her previous incarnation. There had been a time when she'd suffered a bout of amnesia, and not everything had returned to her after she recovered.<p>

Lily Evans' presence on Earth had been necessary, not for herself, but for the child she left behind, the child that would save the world and all those that would come after him, that small band of humans that had the faintest traces of Gallifrey and the Time Lords running through their veins.

The Doctor said goodbye to her son for what could be the last time as she set the body of a young girl who never really had a chance to live down before the unconscious infant's crib.

**Edited 9-12-13.**

**Edited Again 5-21-14.**


	2. High School Encounters

Auror Potter knew for a fact that something was off the instant he set foot inside the school, however his senses were telling him that this was Section 3 business and therefore shouldn't be his business. He knew that he should step aside and have the Muggle Liaison Office call either UNIT or Torchwood in to deal with the problem, but he didn't. The few UNIT guys he'd dealt with had been rather dismissive of him because he was on the "Hocus Pocus Squad", and the only Torchwood operative that didn't set his teeth on edge was Jack Harkness who had spent most of their few meetings either flirting with him or commenting on what an extremely lucky man his father was.

When it came to why Jack seemed to think his father was so exceedingly lucky, during another Section 3 event that the Aurors had accidentally been called to Torchwood had done some sort of scan on him and had determined that he was half human and half something called a Time Lord. Further genetic testing had extrapolated that there was a good fifty to seventy-five percent chance that he was the offspring of the meddling man with the blue box himself. A bit of discreet magical inquiry using certain charms and potions he hadn't bothered with at school because he was so certain of his parentage had told him that the chance of his being the Doctor's offspring was actually one-hundred percent.

How that particular time-lord's DNA could have ended up where his X chromosome was supposed to be, he didn't know. He had known since he was little that he'd had two hearts however, but he hadn't thought it had been significant in any way until Torchwood's scan. He had thought it was the birth defect that the doctors had believed it to be until the tests had come back. Now, he knew that it was a sign of being the offspring of a Time Lord, which he'd been told should have been impossible. Both the Doctor and the Master had confirmed that it should be impossible. Since Magic liked to have the impossible happen to him on a semi-regular basis for some strange reason, he figured magic was to blame.

Oddly enough, rather than running into today's Section 3 problem on his own by accident which was a trait he'd been told that he shared with the Doctor, it had been Dudley that had clued him into the school. Dudley's new wife had decided to start planning their firstborn's life the instant she learned that she was pregnant, and since the Dursleys were considered personae non gratae at Smeltings due to the very public knowledge of the elder Dursleys' neglect of their nephew, Anne was forced to look for a different school. It had been while she was looking on the internet for information about different schools to see which were the best out there that she'd come across the article about the vast improvement that Deffry Vale High School had undergone during the short tenure if its newest headmaster. Dudley, being somewhat suspicious of such vast improvement in such a short amount of time, had called him and asked him to investigate. This was why he was spending his lunch break at a Comprehensive School filled with aliens in the heart of London.

The story of how the story of the neglect of one Harry Potter had come out and ruined the chances of the next generation of Dursleys attending Smeltings was a long one. What happened was that when a rather observant muggle doctor who'd seen him as a toddler recognized him upon spotting him in the newspaper after the rescue of a muggle child idly made a comment in the vicinity of a friend of his who happened to be a journalist about him and a rather important surgery his aunt didn't bring him to, the journalist, sensing a story, went digging. The journalist hadn't had to dig very far in order to find more signs of abuse, and very soon after the story of how the hero of the hour had been abused by his family had gotten out. Not wanting their school associated with a family that clearly didn't meet Smeltings' standards, the Headmaster of said institution sent a letter to the current generation of Dursleys informing them that they need not attempt to enroll their offspring.

That didn't matter now however. Now, he had to focus on the mystery of the school he was standing in and the exact nature of the threat was inhabiting it. All too soon, the new headmaster was heading towards him, and he knew his survival depended on his not letting on that he knew that something was off here.

"Mister Potter?" the headmaster who was called Lucas Finch asked.

"Yes." he replied.

"We spoke on the phone earlier. You mentioned that you wanted a tour of the place." Finch said as he shook his hand. Finch's hand felt wrong somehow. "If I may ask, why did you want to tour the school?"

"My cousin's wife recently found out she was pregnant and has been planning out the child's life right down to when she expects him or her to start settling down and starting a family of his or her own. She heard about the school and the improvements you made. Since I have a son of my own who will probably have a year between finishing primary school and being allowed to attend the boarding school my family has been attending for generations in a few years, I decided to check this place out myself as it was rather conveniently close to my place of work." he replied. There was no way in hell that he would allow James to attend this school, but he wasn't about to let the headmaster know that.

"Ah, planning for the future. That's always a good thing." Finch replied.

Soon, the tour began, and in one of the Science classrooms, Harry found himself trying not to react as he came practically face to face with the man who was biologically his mother. The man, or Time Lord rather, didn't recognize him however, which probably meant that whatever event had led to his creation was still in his future, so any answers as to why he'd been conceived and exactly who was buried in his mother's grave would not be forthcoming. The rest of the school tour was uneventful, and as he couldn't blow both his and the Doctor's cover, any discussions with him would have to wait until later, most likely after he'd taken an independent nocturnal tour of the premises.

* * *

><p>That night, as he was wandering around the building investigating even though he really didn't need to since they had UNIT and Torchwood, and the Doctor was actually on the job to take care of this issue, he ran into someone he'd met once and had convinced to quash a story without resorting to obliviation. Sarah Jane Smith, reporter and onetime companion of the Doctor was backing away from something as if she'd seen a ghost.<p>

Following her line of sight, he found himself looking at the TARDIS.

He could practically feel the mix of sadness and resentment and about a dozen other emotions that practically poured off Sarah Jane as she backed away from the Police Box, unable to take her eyes off of it. He himself had some issues to work out regarding the Doctor, even if he wasn't the same incarnation as the one who had created him and ditched him.

"Remember the story about the time those UNIT guys tipped over a porta-potty only to have the Master come out shooting?" he asked Sarah Jane who apparently hadn't noticed he was there.

From the look in her eyes and the mischievous smile that promptly appeared, it seemed that he had snapped Sarah Jane out of wherever she'd gone and cheered her up.

"The next time he finds his TARDIS, it'll be in a duck pond." he said as he pulled out his wand and shrunk the TARDIS.

**Edited 9-12-13**

**Edited Again 5-21-14.**


	3. He Always Leaves

It was only natural that the Doctor would appear while he was shrinking the TARDIS. The Time Lord had a bad habit of showing up at precisely the right, or wrong moment. It was almost as if he had a sixth sense about these things. Of course, being a Time Lord, it was entirely possible that he did, considering the fact that his own senses were somewhat wonky and it had made focusing hell when he was younger.

"Hello Sarah Jane." the Doctor said before turning to him and giving him a glare so intense, that if looks could kill, he would've been completely vaporized before his ashes could even hit the floor.

"You'd better unshrink my TARDIS right now if you know what's good for you." the Doctor growled at him.

Giving him a rather cold look of his own, he complied with the Doctor's "request". It wasn't worth the fight that would follow if he didn't. That, and he wanted to return home to his wife and kids, and there was a good chance that wouldn't happen if he became the Doctor's enemy. Despite the fact that the Doctor generally didn't carry weapons, very few of the Doctor's enemies lived to face him twice. Sure, their species might, but the individuals themselves...The Doctor apparently kept his companions around in order to keep his hands relatively clean, much as Dumbledore had done with the Order.

"Witches." the Doctor muttered when the TARDIS was back to its usual size. "If the genetic tests hadn't come back negative, I'd swear you were all part Carrionite."

It was at that point that Sarah Jane had finally fully gotten over her shock over seeing the Doctor for the first time in decades and allowed herself to feel the anger that had been lying in wait beneath it. Storming up to the Doctor she slapped him.

"I waited for you!" she practically yelled as she started hitting him again. "I thought you'd died, and here you are..."

The Doctor had the decency to look guilty at that point, grabbing the balled fists that Sarah Jane had started repeatedly pounding into his chest. Before the Doctor could say anything to calm the woman down, a loud girlish scream echoed through the hallways. The confrontation was immediately abandoned as the Doctor ran towards the sound with him and the reporter trailing in his wake. He held his wand at the ready in case it was needed.

As they raced towards the source of the scream, they ran into a bleach blonde girl who didn't look older than twenty that was apparently the Doctor's current companion if their reactions to running into each-other were any indication.

"Who're they?" the blonde asked.

"Rose, Sarah Jane, Sarah Jane, Rose, and that is, uh..." the Doctor said, making hasty introductions as the quartet ran down the hall towards the school kitchens.

"Harry Potter." he and Sarah Jane replied simultaneously.

"Really?" Rose practically squealed, looking at him with increased interest.

Having dealt with fans since he was eleven, he quietly pretended that hadn't happened and let the Doctor's companion bring herself back under control. Hopefully, he wouldn't be dealing with another Ginny before she'd gotten her head screwed on straight. Most people had wondered why he'd married her considering what a fangirl she had been, but even fangirls grow up. Especially when they've been thrust into the sort of danger his wife had been and forced to fight their way out of it. That, and Ginny had come with a rather large family that he wanted to be an actual part of rather than a friend of to boot.

"For some strange reason, my companions like your biography." the Doctor said as they entered the kitchen and found a young black man who reminded him of Dean lying on the kitchen floor covered in shrink wrapped rat corpses.

As they were trying to figure out why there would be dead rats in the kitchen, well dead rats that hadn't been part of a health code violation, Sarah Jane had suggested they were there for dissection, and Rose chose to take a dig at her age while pointing out that rats weren't used for dissection anymore. He knew that look the two women shared during that particular discussion, as he'd seen Audrey Weasley and Penelope Clearwater sharing that exact same look every time Penelope brought her son Richard to the Burrow. The man who'd had the rats dumped on him who was apparently named Mickey apparently recognized that look and the tension between Sarah Jane and the Doctor's new companion as well. There was an almost sympathetic look in his eyes as he laughed and said "Oh mate, the missus and the ex, welcome to every man's worst nightmare.".

Soon they were on their way, continuing to explore the school in the dark while Sarah Jane and Rose took pot shots at each-other. Eventually, they ended up at the Headmaster's office where several winged creatures were sleeping in a position that made them resemble a small flock of giant bats. Seeing as he hadn't seen anything like them either in Fantastic Beasts and where to find them or on the Being Department's roster, he figured that they were extraterrestrial, which meant he would be calling to tell Dudley that he'd found a bunch of aliens instead of some new form of mind control that some wizards had cooked up. Dudley would surely get a good laugh out of that.

Upon managing to escape from the winged creatures without noticeably waking them up, they decided to get while the getting was good. After racing out of the building, looking back every few seconds to make sure they weren't being followed by the winged creatures they'd discovered, the Doctor said that they'd have to go back inside because he needed to use the TARDIS to examine some sample that Rose had gotten from the cafeteria. The Doctor glared at him when he said this, apparently still unhappy with his shrinking said TARDIS.

Fortunately, because Sarah Jane had something in her car that the Doctor could use once he fixed it, they hadn't had to go back into the building with the dangerous looking winged aliens which may or may not have been woken up by them that he wouldn't try facing without a good team at his back or Ron and Hermione at the very least. After retrieving Sarah Jane's dog robot, they found themselves at a diner where he had one of the most uncomfortable meals of his life while the Doctor tried to fix the machine that Sarah Jane talked about like it was a pet. The tension between Rose and Sarah Jane was almost palpable, and there wasn't a whole tribe of Weasleys there to break it up. There seemed to be a bit of tension between Mickey and the Doctor as well, but it was subdued, as if there was some history and either one or both of them had mostly gotten over it. He would've been okay with the mounting tension that he was starting to get used to since he'd faced something similar at several Weasley family meals, but Sarah Jane had to go and ask the Doctor why he didn't come back.

"That's what he does!" he snapped when the Doctor refused to answer her. "He'll leave you to die, and he won't come back."

"You sound like you're speaking from personal experience." the Doctor said, examining him with interest rather than glaring at him.

"I found something out a while back, and when I went digging further I was told an interesting story about one Lily Evans. Let's just say that since you don't know me now, in the future, you're going to follow the same old pattern and leave your family behind." he said, reining in the anger that threatened to boil over and cause him to tell the man everything in detail in front of a bunch of strangers.

"FAMILY?!"

He briefly wondered what was so shocking about what he'd said that even the Doctor had been stunned, then he realized it was the Doctor. As Jack had once said, the Doctor doesn't do "domestics". At least he didn't until he decided to create a little nest with James Potter who had to have known that he wasn't Lily seeing as he'd gone to school with the girl for six years and had been pursuing her that entire time.

**Edited 5-21-14.**


	4. Interlude: James Joins the Conspiracy

James Potter stood before Dumbledore's desk. The Headmaster had called him in for a meeting prior to the start of the school year, and while most of the school's students were getting ready to head out to the Hogwarts Express in order to head up to the castle for yet another academic year, James was already there.

"I suppose you have questions." Dumbledore said, nodding towards the Head Boy badge in James Potter's hand.

James had been rather surprised when he'd found the Head Boy badge in his annual letter from the school. He'd been certain that if anyone were going to get the position it would be that Ravenclaw berk Frobisher, and for a full hour he'd believed that either Dumbledore or McGonagall had pranked him, making a not-so-subtle dig at the fact that he was the leader of one of the worst groups of troublemakers the school had seen in a generation, barring the Death Eaters of course.

He'd been trying to grow up for the past year after one of his Summer pranks had landed him with a month-long stint in Azkaban which was a place he never wanted to return to, but he often found himself sliding back into old habits and cursing Snivellous behind Lily's back. Lily who'd finally agreed to date him in order to spite Snape who'd spectacularly ended the SevLil that looked like it might've continued forever despite Snape's Death Eater friends by calling Lily a Mudblood. Sometimes, being with Lily seemed to be a case of "Be careful what you wish for...". Sure, the dates were nice, but the arguments were hell, and it was pretty damn obvious that Snivellous had been teaching Lily the Dark Arts behind everyone's backs.

He'd been trying to grow up, cursing Snape notwithstanding, had grown up some, but not nearly enough to qualify for the position of Head Boy which made his appointment to the position all the more puzzling.

"I'm afraid that I will have to start this conversation off with a bit of terrible news." Dumbledore said, drawing him out of his musings and startling the hell out of him because the old man was actually looking his age for once, and the customary twinkle in his eyes was gone.

"What is it?" James asked, suddenly very worried.

"The Daily Prophet's rather lurid account of the attack on the Evans family home was rather accurate save for one detail." Dumbledore replied. "Lily Evans wasn't injured, she died."

James drew back in shock. "But..." he said, remembering the image of the lost looking girl lying on one of the hospital beds at St. Mungo's. A lost looking girl who'd looked so much like Lily that he hadn't questioned anything about the story he'd read before he'd penned several desperate letters to his girlfriend who'd never replied, making him believe that the relationship was over.

The relationship was over, just not in the way he'd expected...

"I'm afraid there's more." Dumbledore said.

"More sir?" James asked, still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his Lily had died.

"Seer Lovegood has informed us that Miss Evans would be needed in the future if we are to win the war against Voldemort." Dumbledore said. "Since Lily Evans is gone, we have been forced to bring in a substitute to fill the role she would've taken in the hopes that she'll do whatever it is that Lily was supposed to have done. Admittedly, we were grasping at straws at this point, but Seer Lovegood had indicated that the substitute might work as long as she was "Lily Evans". The young er, woman that I believe to be a blood relative of Lily's whom Lily had defended to her dying breath woke up following the attack sans memory, and we have told her that she is Lily Evans. Not knowing who she actually is, she believed us."

"What does this have to do with me or this?" James asked, holding up the Head Boy badge.

"This is the part where I will ask you to do something for me that I find distasteful in the extreme but necessary for the war effort which I know you wish to join as you have repeatedly stated such. If you decline, I will not hold it against you and the badge will go to William Frobisher as I originally intended." Dumbledore replied, looking rather grim. "Since you were Lily Evans' paramour, you will be in the best position to help our mystery girl pass herself off as Miss Evans and head any serious mistakes off at the pass. A cover story of trauma induced amnesia can only go so far, and if our girl does something completely against Lily's nature..."

"I see..." James said, seeing full well what Dumbledore was asking. The old man wanted him to do more than merely keep the girl he was attempting to pass off as Lily Evans in line, he wanted him to convince the girl who believed herself to be Lily that he was her boyfriend and that he was in love with her despite the fact that his real girlfriend had died over the Summer and he'd never gotten the chance to mourn her passing because he hadn't known about it.

"And, what about our dormmates? Surely they'll notice that something is off." James said when the hole in the plan became apparent to him as he considered it.

"Here's where what I would ask of you will become exceedingly difficult." Dumbledore replied, looking even older if possible. "While the Head Boy and Head Girl usually stay in their dormitories, precedent was set in 1257 when that year's Head Boy and Head Girl became engaged and were given their own private quarters. If you go through with this, you may break your engagement the minute school ends, but..."

James swallowed. He'd wanted to be grown up, a mature adult who did adult things such as fighting the Dark Lord. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Lest-He-Hear-And-Show was tearing their world apart, and he'd wanted to join the war effort practically since it started because it was the right thing to do. But this...

If this faux Lily could somehow end the war before too many people, people like his parents, died however...

"I-I'll do it." James said, hoping he wasn't making a big mistake.

"Thank you my boy!" Dumbledore said, looking as if a great deal of weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. "Though I planned on waiting until you graduated before asking you to join, welcome to the Order of the Phoenix."

Dumbledore offered his hand and James, truly feeling like an adult for the first time and not really liking the feeling, took it.

"You should head out if you want to catch the train and arrive with the rest of the students." Dumbledore said after taking a quick glance at a wall clock which most people dismissed upon coming into the office and taking note of the time.

James, after grabbing a handful of Floo powder from the jar on the Headmaster's mantlepiece, turned back to face the old man. "One more question," he said. "Won't people question my being Head Boy seeing as I was never a Prefect."

"You are a Quiddich Captain, and extremely popular amongst the students outside of Slytherin." Dumbledore replied. "Precedent for such an atypical appointment was set in 1549."

"I see..." James said, realizing how fucked up his appointment to Head Boy which he'd only gotten because of Lily who'd likely been given the position due to the fact that they needed to keep the fake away from her dormmates who would ask inconvenient questions that might lead to her questioning herself was. Odds were that relations amongst the students who would see this as yet another example of Dumbledore's favoritism of Gryffindor would take a serious hit because of this. Frobisher may have been a berk, but there were people who liked him and had expected him to become Head Boy ever since he'd been named Prefect.

Turning back to the grate, he flung the Floo powder in, stepped inside the flames, called out "Leaky Cauldron", and steeled himself as he prepared to make his way to the bank in order to withdraw the funds for an engagement ring that he would be giving to a complete stranger along with a marriage proposal.

The only good thing about this situation was that Snivellous didn't know and probably wouldn't know for a good while that he wasn't proposing to Lily.


End file.
